Isaac Newton: Alchemist

“Newton’s interest in alchemy has long been known in broad outline, but the scope and details of that moonlighting enterprise are only now becoming clear, as science historians gradually analyze and publish Newton’s extensive writings on alchemy—a million-plus words from the Newtonian archives that had previously been largely ignored. … How could the man who vies in surveys with Albert Einstein for the title of ‘greatest physicist ever,’ the man whom James Gleick has aptly designated ‘chief architect of the modern world,’ have been so swept up in what looks to modern eyes like a medieval delusion?”